After French revolutionaries had stormed the Bastille in 1789 an early spin doctor had a confiscated printing press shown to the Paris mob, telling them it was an instrument of torture. England football managers, better informed than your average sans-culotte, would have seen through the ruse. Then again, they might have appreciated the allegory.

Fabio Capello, for one, would surely not feel this was stretching things a bit, since he is now on the critical rack reserved for those on whose watch England have come to grief in a World Cup. He went to the 2010 tournament a ramrod and returned a dipstick, or so the headlines would have it. Not for the first time, an Italian job has left a coach swaying awkwardly on the edge of a cliff.

Little has happened over the past month to restore the personal prestige lost by Capello in South Africa. His inclusion of fresher faces in the squad for Wednesday's friendly against Hungary was offset by the decision of some senior bit players to quit internationals. Steven Gerrard's announcement that if he was a fan he would probably boo the team recalled Ron Atkinson's one-liner when he was managing Sheffield Wednesday and the team had had a bad night at Hillsborough: "If I was in the crowd I'd have been shouting: 'Atkinson out!'"

As it was, Gerrard's two goals at Wembley spared Capello the further embarrassment of defeat by modest opposition, but he was still slated for calling time on David Beckham's international career without telling the player first.

Had the England coach done so before the World Cup he would have been praised for his decisiveness and realism, but now this has become just another reason to question his judgment. If he was at fault it was in keeping Beckham around too long.

Capello might have had better luck had he first faced a European Championship rather than a World Cup, since failures in the former have tended to find critics and public more forgiving. Alf Ramsey's career as England manager began with a 5-2 defeat in France in Paris early in 1963 which ended their interest in the European tournament but he still had three years to prepare a squad for the 1966 World Cup. Don Revie's team failed to reach the knockout stages of the 1976 European Championship but only when things started to go pear‑shaped in the 1978 World Cup qualifiers did Revie walk out.

Ron Greenwood's England side went out tamely in the 1980 European Championship yet it took defeats by Switzerland and Norway, which imperilled the team's qualification for the 1982 World Cup, to get the critical pack snapping at his heels. Bobby Robson was spat on by fans at Wembley in 1984 after a 2-0 defeat by the Soviet Union in a friendly had followed his failure to take the team to France for the European finals, but his job was always going to be secure for the 1986 World Cup.

Graham Taylor reached the 1992 European Championship in Sweden, and raised some critical hackles when he substituted Gary Lineker as his team went out to the hosts, but his departure only became a near-certainty once a computer clerk had given San Marino the lead in less than 10 seconds of England's final qualifier, or non‑qualifier, for the 1994 World Cup.

Taylor was a good club manager out of his depth at international level. Sven‑Goran Eriksson and now Capello have shown that mighty CVs in Europe are an inadequate grounding for the task of distilling a successful England team from the club-oriented, multinational domestic product.

"The trouble with our game," Greenwood used to say, "is that there are too many foreigners." And he was talking about the Scots, Irish and Welsh.

Glenn Hoddle came close to getting it right in France in 1998. His reorganisation of the England side against Argentina after Beckham's dismissal was masterful, the ensuing penalty shoot-out less so. Then Hoddle allowed commerce to overrule common sense when he published his indiscreet World Cup diary the following season. This and the karma kerfuffle finished him eventually.

Maybe Capello is beginning to wonder what he did in a previous life. At least Dimitar Berbatov is not going to come out of international retirement for Bulgaria next month. Is he?